cut down vs decrease

cut down

verb
  • To reduce the amount of something. 

  • To insult, to belittle. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cut, down. 

  • To bring down by cutting. 

decrease

verb
  • To make (a quantity) smaller. 

  • Of a quantity, to become smaller. 

noun
  • A reduction in the number of stitches, usually accomplished by suspending the stitch to be decreased from another existing stitch or by knitting it together with another stitch. See Decrease (knitting). 

  • An amount by which a quantity is decreased. 

How often have the words cut down and decrease occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )